German researchers studying wasps known as beewolves (Philanthus triangulum) find they have a symbiotic relationship with the bacteria Streptomyces. The bacteria produce nine different antibiotics that protect the wasps from harmful bacterial infections and even fungus!

Female beewolves cultivate the useful bugs in specialised antennal gland reservoirs and apply them to the ceilings of brood cells, said the scientists. The wasp larvae, growing in the cells, later take up the bacteria and transfer them to the outside surfaces of their cocoons.

Laboratory tests showed that the beewolves employed an advanced form of "combination medication" using nine antibiotic varieties.

Johannes Kroiss, from the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology in Jena, said: 'A combined treatment with streptochlorin and eight different piericidines we were able to isolate from the cocoon helps to fend off a very broad spectrum of micro-organisms.

Not only do the wasps use a combination of broad-spectrum antibiotics, they've been doing it for millions of years. Link -via the Presurfer

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I don't understand much Japanese, but part of this conversation is in cat language. -via Arbroath

With people creating action scenes like this with toys and a computer, maybe Hollywood can go back to making movies with great acting and dialog. This light saber battle is a creation of Fancy Pants Productions. Link (embedded YouTube video)

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Sure, you liked OK Go's first video for the song "This Too Shall Pass", but you'll love this Rube Goldberg production as well! This official video for the recorded version was directed by James Frost, OK Go and Syyn Labs. -via Buzzfeed

Why would someone post a video of a painting? Because you need to see it in three dimensions to get the full effect.

This is a movie of a super-cool "painting" hanging in the basement of the British Library, in London. The author has done many such paintings, but this is the best (and all the others are very similar). It's called "Paradoxymoron", by Patrick Hughes

Link -via Digg

You might remember the picture of Disaster Girl that was a popular meme a couple of years ago. Jack Shepherd at Buzzfeed called the child pictured here "Disaster Girl's evil grandma". She is actually Flickr user Nathan Callahan's mother, pictured after the Long Beach earthquake of 1933. Link -via Buzzfeed

There are quite a few things that can go wrong with our sleep cycles, but can anything be more terrifying than "exploding head syndrome"?

This creatively named disorder occurs during the onset of deep sleep, when the person is suddenly startled awake by a sharp, loud noise. These noises range from cymbals crashing to explosives going off. To the person hearing them, the explosions seem to originate either from right next to the person's head or inside the skull itself. There's no pain involved, and no danger, either. Doctors don't know what causes exploding head syndrome, but they do know that it isn't associated with any serious illness.

This is only one of the ten disorders listed. Sleep well tonight! Link -via Digg

Brad Martin and his son Ben sell Airsoft BB guns at their store in Cornelius, Oregon. A recent shipment of 30 of the toy guns were intercepted and seized by ATF agents when they entered the country at Tacoma, Washington.

The Martins said they buy their stock from Taiwan because the merchandise is less expensive. But the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives seized a shipment of 30 in October. That shipment is worth around $12,000 and the ATF is promising to destroy the entire shipment.

Special Agent Kelvin Crenshaw said the toys can be easily retro-fitted into dangerous weapons.

Martin disputes that the guns can be converted. Another reason for the seizure is that they were missing the orange tip mandated on imported toy guns.

The Martins said they've received shipments before from Taiwan that were missing the orange tips and were simply asked by customs agents to drive up to Tacoma and paint the tips orange themselves. They are wondering why it is an issue now.

Link -via J-Walk Blog

Today's Lunchtime Quiz at mental_floss will test your knowledge about Elizabeth and Jessica Wakefield and the students at Sweet Valley High. Despite never having read any of the 152 books (they were first published in 1983), I scored 45%. Link

The Millions has a great essay about one difference between conventional books and electronic books that we may not have considered. You can learn a lot about someone by seeing what books they've kept. Perusing someone's bookshelf can lead to great conversations as you see what interests they have and what you might have in common. The author discovered his own mother as a person who had a life before he came along by noting the books she read, still displayed on bookshelves in his grandparents' home.

And then there was my wife, whose bookshelves I first inspected in a humid DC summer, while her parents were away at work. The shelves were stuffed full of novels—Little House on the Prairie, The Andromeda Strain, One Hundred Years of Solitude—that described an arc of discovery I had followed too. At the time we met, her books still quivered from recent use and still radiated traces of the adolescent wonder they’d prompted. In the years since, on visits home for the holidays and to celebrate engagements and births, I’ve watched her bookshelves dim and settle. Lately they’ve begun to resemble a type of monument I recognize from my mother’s room. They sit there waiting for the day when our son will be old enough to spend his own afternoons puzzling out a picture of his mother in the books she left behind.

With the availability of e-readers and books on the internet, will anyone ever know what the next generation will find important to read and to keep? Link -via Metafilter

Whatever you get when you combine games, Star Wars, and Lego construction has to be awesome. When it's big and useful, it's doubly awesome! Stefan built a foosball table completely from Lego bricks, and manned it with Star Wars minifigs. The game is completely playable, too! Link -via Coolest Gadgets

When the Apple store on Fifth Avenue in New York had a broken step in their glass spiral staircase replaced, Mark Burstiner asked for, and received the old step from the repair crew. Over a year later, he put it up for sale on eBay. Then he was contacted by a VP from Seele, the staircase manufacturer. The VP told him Apple was very unhappy and asked him to pull the auction. Burstiner stopped the auction, but then the Seele representative called him again and demanded that he return the step!

What this sounds like to me is Seele trying to save face because Apple is furious that they were irresponsible enough to relinquish ownership of the tread. Though it may be embarrassing for both corporations, it may simply be a lesson learned at a high price. Let me put it this way: If you caught a foul ball at a World Series game, got it signed by a player, received a high five from the security guard on the way out of the stadium, and went home, that ball is now yours, right? It started as one entity?s property, and through a series of consensual transactions, it ended up in your hands. Now, let?s say a year and a half later, the player who signed it is huge, and you decide to put it up for auction. If the MLB reached out to you and said, "Hey! No way, buddy. That was OURS. Hand it over!" Guess what? That wouldn't fly.

Burstiner put the step back up on eBay. No doubt publicity about the case brought more bids to the auction, which is at $6,300 at the time of this post. Link to story. Link to auction.

You know how people help their cats to reach upper floors by installing cat ladders? Those can't hold a candle to this cat-operated automatic feline elevator! Link (embedded video)

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Designer Steven Heller gives an overview and critique of Olympic pictograms used over the past 74 years for the New York Times. When you only see these every few years, you don't realize how different they are for each Olympiad. -via the Presurfer

The final day of the Winter Olympics this Sunday has only two events: the gold medal men's hockey game and the 50km cross-country skiing race. Brian McKeever will be skiing for Canada. This race will make him the first Olympian ever to participate in both the Winter Olympics and Paralympics in the same year. McKeever is legally blind.

In 1998, McKeever was a promising 19-year-old skier when he was diagnosed with Stargardt’s disease, a type of juvenile macular degeneration that gradually leads to blindness. Twelve years later, McKeever only has 10 percent of his vision, and that tiny fraction is in his peripheral vision.

Rather than rolling over when he lost his sight, though, McKeever got back on his skis.

Read about how McKeever does it at mental_floss. Link